page_title: Power Grid
section_title: Game play
hierarchical_section_title: Power Grid / Game play
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Hry a hlavolamy 2008 - festival her a hlavolamů v Praze, Holešovicích
context_page_description: Power Grid is the English-language edition of the multiplayer German-style board game Funkenschlag designed by Friedemann Friese and first published in 2004. Power Grid is published by Rio Grande Games.
  In the game, each player represents a company that owns power plants and tries to supply electricity to cities. Over the course of the game, the players will bid on power plants and buy resources to produce electricity to provide power to the growing number of cities in their expanding network.
context_section_description: The game comes with a double-sided board with a map of the United States of America on one side and Germany on the other. Each map consists of six regions featuring cities with connections of varying costs between them. The number of regions used is based on the number of players. Map design itself is a key feature in the strategy of game play as some areas of the map feature generally higher connection costs compared to other areas of the map.
  The game is played in rounds, with each round consisting of 5 phases:
  Determining player order
  Auction power plants
  Buying resources
  Building
  Bureaucracy
  The game ends after one player builds a fixed number of cities. The winner is the player who can supply electricity to the most cities with his network. Tie breakers are who has the most money, then the most cities.
  Phase 1— Determining Turn Order
  Turn order is rearranged each turn according to the number of cities each player has connected. The player with more connections is placed before a player with fewer connections and continues ending with the player with the fewest cities playing last. When players own the same number of cities, a player with the higher value plant is placed before a player with a lower value plant. (Exception: Turn order is determined randomly at the beginning of the game, and then rearranged after power plants are purchased per the normal rules).
  Phase 2— Auction Power Plants
  Turn order determines who begins the bidding on power plants. The first player begins and may choose to pass rather than bid on a chosen plant, in which case they forfeit the chance to bid on any power plants on a given round. An initial bid must be equal to or higher than the value of an available power plant. After the initial bid, players take turns bidding in clockwise order until every player has passed on a current bid. Once a plant is purchased, a new one is drawn from the deck to replace it, with the available power plants re-arranged in numerical order according to their value. The player with the highest priority turn order (which may still be the first player) then has the option to bid on an available plant. Phase 2 ends when every player has either purchased a plant or passed on their opportunity to bid on a plant. Most power plants require one or a combination of resources: coal, oil, garbage (see waste to energy), and uranium, in order to supply electricity. Wind turbines and hydraulic plants do not require resources.
  Phase 3— Buying Resources
  In reverse turn order, players can buy resources for their plants. Players may only purchases resources they can use, and each plant may only hold twice the number of resources it needs to run. Thus a plant that uses two oil may hold up to four oil. As resources are purchased, they become more expensive, thus the person who is last in turn order can buy resources at the cheapest prices for that round.
  Phase 4— Building
  In reverse turn order, players may build into cities. In the first round, a player may choose to build into any city that is not already occupied. A player may continue to expand by paying the cost to build into the desired city slot plus the value of all connections to that city from an already occupied city. No player may build into more than one slot in a city. Slot one costs 10 'Elektros' and is the only slot available during Step 1. During Step 2, the second slot is available at a cost of 15 Elektros, and in Step 3, the final slot is available at a cost of 20 Elektros.
  Phase 5— Bureaucracy
  During this phase, players expend resources to power their cities and earn more income (Elektros) based on the number of cities they power. Resources available to be purchased are replenished at a rate based on the number of players in the game as well as the current Step. Finally, the highest value power plant is placed at the bottom of the draw deck (this changes in Step 3).
  The game is further divided into 3 "steps". In Step One, 8 power plants are visible to players arranged into two rows of four based on their numerical value ranking from lowest to highest. The first
caption: Power Grid
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